Cutaway diagram of a typical Apollo service module liquid oxygen tank. NASA A diagram illustrating the post-Apollo 13 liquid oxygen tank improvements made as a result of the Apollo 13 accident.

Forty-five years ago, on April 11, 1970, when Apollo 13 was launched into space, manned missions to the moon were just starting to seem like something that the U.S. had a handle on. The space race ...

Apollo Spacecraft Diagram. Diagram showing relative sizes of Apollo astronauts, the Lunar Module, and the Command/Service Module.

Comparison of the damaged service module of Apollo 13. At left, the familiar image. At center: a stack of eight frames of 16mm film. At right, a high resolution scan of the original transparency.

The decision to use lunar orbit rendezvous as the mission mode for Apollo meant that two docked spacecraft — the lunar module (LM) and command service module (CSM) — would arrive at the Moon.

• The Saint Louis Science Center is one of only four stops on the Smithsonian’s special traveling tour of the exhibit Destination Moon: The Apollo 11 Mission.It features various artifacts, footage, ...

In this historic photo from the U.S. space agency, the Apollo 16 Command and Service Module (CSM) "Casper" approaches the Lunar Module (LM). The two spacecraft were about to make their final ...